Sugary Drinks Kill 184,000 People Every Year

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Sugary drinks cause 184,000 deaths worldwide annually, including
25,000 deaths in the United States, according to a new study.

The finding — a revised estimate of numbers
first presented at a scientific meeting in 2013 — represents
a tally of deaths from diabetes, heart disease and cancer that
scientists say can be directly attributed to the consumption of
sweetened sodas, fruit drinks, sports/energy drinks and iced
teas.

The numbers imply that sugary drinks can cause as many deaths
annually as the flu.

"It should be a global priority to substantially reduce or
eliminate sugar-sweetened beverages from the diet," said Dr.
Dariush Mozaffarian, senior author of the study and dean of the
Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts
University in Massachusetts. [ 7
Foods You Can Overdose On ]

There is evidence that
sugary drinks contribute to obesity and that obesity
contributes to people's risk of these diseases, Mozaffarian said.
Previous studies found that obesity-related diseases cause more
than 17 million deaths per year.

For this latest study, led by Gitanjali Singh, an assistant
professor at Tufts, researchers attempted to tease out the
contribution that sugary drinks make to this global burden of
obesity-related deaths. They calculated that there are 133,000
deaths yearly from type 2 diabetes; 45,000 deaths from
cardiovascular disease ; and 6,450 deaths from cancer.

The study is based on a complex statistical analysis of
country-specific dietary habits and causes of death in more than
50 countries, coupled with information on the availability of
sugar on the world market. The researchers' definition of sugary
drinks included beverages sweetened with cane sugar, beet sugar
and high-fructose corn syrup.

"Among the 20 countries with the highest estimated
sugar-sweetened beverage-related deaths, at least eight were in
Latin America and the Caribbean, reflecting the high intakes in
that region of the world," Singh said.

In Mexico, where more than 10 percent of the population has
diabetes, approximately 30 percent of the deaths among people
under age 45 are due to sugary drinks, the researchers concluded.
Mexico had the highest death rate attributable to
sugar-sweetened beverages, the researchers said.

Conversely, in Japan, where unsweetened teas are among the most
popular beverages, deaths from sugary drinks are negligible.

Americans consume 22.2 teaspoons of added sugar (equal to 355
calories) per day, on average, and sugar-sweetened beverages are
the primary source of this sugar, according to the American Heart
Association (AHA). The sugars are added to foods and drinks to
improve their taste but provide no nutritional benefit, only
calories, thus contributing to
weight gain and heart disease, the AHA said.

A 12-ounce (355 milliliters) serving of regular soda has about 10
teaspoons of sugar, according to the American Diabetes
Association, which recommends that people avoid drinking
sugar-sweetened beverages to help prevent diabetes.

The researchers could not prove a direct cause and effect — for
example, they cannot say that sugary beverages are the actual,
primary cause of these 184,000 deaths on an individual level.
Rather, they based their conclusions on national beverage
consumption trends, death rates and sugar availability.

The beverage industry remains skeptical of the findings.

"This study does not show that consuming sugar-sweetened
beverages causes chronic diseases and the authors themselves
acknowledge that they are at best estimating effects of
sugar-sweetened beverage consumption," the American Beverage
Association, a trade association that represents the U.S.
non-alcoholic beverage industry, said in a statement.

Mozaffarian said the connection between sugary drinks and obesity
is well established. "They [the industry] have their heads in the
sand," Mozaffarian told Live Science.